


You would even say it glows

by Seek_The_Mist



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas Eve, Fluffy sentimentalism, M/M, Pynch Secret Santa 2017, Ronan's crazy dream creations strike again, christmas shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seek_The_Mist/pseuds/Seek_The_Mist
Summary: On Adam's first Christmas back from college, everyone is back in Henrietta and more troubles than expected unleash in a very festive fashion.“It’s Christmas,” Ronan replied, matter-of-factly, moving towards the fireplace to light it up and warm his feet there. “Matthew will like this.”Matthew surely would. At the same time, Adam wasn’t sure if and how he liked it himself, and settling for a diplomatically asepticI don’t care either wayleft a bad aftertaste in his mouth.The feeling was slippery.It would have been reasonable for Ronan to be pissed at Adam’s lack of participation to this specific brand ofLynchness, but he wasn’t. Incongruently, it was another reason for Adam to feel like he was missing something essential for this whole winter break at the Barns.A little tale of madness written for Pynch Secret Santa 2017, as a gift for Mild-Lunacy, on the themes of "the Adventure with the Once and Future Camaro" + "A weird guest needs help at 300 Fox Way and the boys are involved".





	You would even say it glows

  
  


Adam first jostled awake in total darkness, which given the early winter days could mean anything from three in the afternoon to seven o'clock in the morning. The reflexive switch of his brain that decided to pull his eyes open — governed by a circadian cycle Adam destroyed for himself in high school and did not realign in a semester at Columbia — was compatible with any of these options.  
He inhaled, gearing up to remember if there had been an alarm on the other side of his slumber, waking him to go to work, outline an assignment or grab breakfast while networking with his peers. His breath reverberated humid on his lips, filling his nostrils with a suggestion of smells. 

Wood. A familiar sweat. Holly and musk. An impression of heat.

Adam did not open his eyes but allowed himself to exhale, bodily, resting his forehead on Ronan's nape. 

Details slotted into position in an easy catalogue, disorienting in their lack of urgency. 

Cold ears, a suggestion of chill from the world that somehow existed outside of the cocoon of blankets and duvet. The impossible span of Ronan's shoulders, radiating heat, and the inside of his knees brushing against Adam's. The soft, oblivious breathing of Ronan in his sleep — impossible to match in its pace, and yet Adam caught himself trying.

It was weird to be back. He should probably get up.

Ronan reached for Adam's hand where it lingered on the fabric of his shirt, and tucked it close to his chest with a deep sigh. He did not move further and his breath didn't waver. 

It was good to be back. There was no rush to go anywhere.

Adam slotted his body better in their puzzle, plastering against Ronan's back. Comfortable bed and an unyielding body to hold. 

He had not planned to go back to sleep, but the warmth made the back of his eyelids heavy and tingling. It was easier to burrow down and let the warmth lull him back to sleep, after all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The second awakening came to a bedroom pooled with indistinct grey light and the mattress jumping around asymmetrically. Adam's eyes were wide awake, heart pounding, before even he consciously realized it himself.

The mattress stopped moving, and an uncoordinated clattering of hooves traced its way on the wooden floor all the way down the corridor.

"Opal!" Adam protested, trying to get up and convince his tongue to come up with an appropriate reproach. 

Ronan was splayed on top of him, heavy like a very seductively shaped brick and just as reluctant to being moved, so neither happened. Nor did Opal offer a distant string of unconvincing apologies mixed with complaints for having woke them up so brutally, as she usually would. 

The clattering expanded all the way to the ground floor of the Barns and then suddenly quieted.

"Opal!" Adam stressed again, turning his head above Ronan's, still resting between his chest and shoulders.

"What?!" Opal's voice came from the direction of Matthew's bedroom, groggy and grumpy with sleep.

"Shit" Ronan mumbled, reproachful.

Too heavy and too unmoving, even for Adam to be distracted by the way their legs were twisted together.

"Ronan, what the hell did you just dream?" 

All things considered, a regular morning in the Lynch household.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"But how can you not know what you were dreaming, exactly?"

Ronan scratched the buzzed hair on his nape, sliding down the stairs with more elegance that should be legal for someone who couldn't even move a muscle five minutes before.

"Parrish, I'm not grocery shopping when I'm dreaming!"

"Except when you are, I have to hide that heater every time my roommate is around because it heats like a nuclear reactor!"

"That college room is fucking freezing, what is your point?" Ronan gave him the stink eye while putting on a random pair of socks and bolted out of the door without even shoes on. In the sudden burst of cold that soared through the open door, the black line of he tattoo, visible around the hem of a too-thin t-shirt, rippled like the surface of a lake in a skipping stones game. "Mary mother of Jesus..."

Adam did his best to provide Ronan with a masterful execution of an unimpressed gaze, picking up a coat from the rack before following him outside in the porch. It was as cold as Ronan’s mumbled string of swears could suggest, and missing the bed was all too easy. "My point is that we’re rushing to chase this stuff out in the cold but we don’t even know what it is."

The indiscernible mixture of frost and actual snow crackled under Ronan’s hobbling down the steps, uncharacteristically awkward in the clear attempt not to freeze his feet off. "It doesn't fucking matter, it's like an animal."

"Like what animal?" Adam feigned disinterest, even in the clear smell of attempted deflection in the winter morning air. He still followed Ronan down towards the front of the master house, where a trail of something that looked like hooves disappeared in the thin layer of snow all the way out in the field. The imprints were too big to be Opal’s, too small for a monstrosity like the night horror. None of the Barn’s animal where around, shied away in their carefully curated inside spaces, evidently wiser than the both of them.

"A horse? Another fucking goat? An oversized crazy sheep?" Ronan dragged his words, scrutinizing the field in a studious effort to avoid Adam’s gaze. He kicked on clump of frozen ground and swore again when his feet reminded him of the lack of shoes.

“Nice guesses for the hooves,” Adam mused, closing the distance with Ronan’s back and propping the forearms on his shoulders. “Are we freaking out about an oversized crazy sheep?”

“We are not freaking the fuck out.”

Adam’s smile stretched his skin against the cold air. “Good to know. Especially since you’re the one who told me that your dream animals tend not to leave the Barns.” He eyed Ronan sideways, but got no obvious reaction but a tilt of his head to brush towards him. His blue eyes were still facing forwards to where the trail disappeared, his breath fogging out slightly. “We either go back now or I’ll drop the task of amputating your feet onto Gansey.”

A snarl opened up at the idea, all white teeth and morning stubble, evidently entertained. “The lecture for something like that would be a damn trip.” Ronan turned around and looped his arm around Adam — more around his neck than his shoulders — and headed the both of them back towards the house, foul mood suddenly dropped. His strides were sort of hindered by the cold and the coarse ground getting to his feet but Ronan still moved around with confidence.

A few meters ahead, the master house stood unperturbed and yet constantly changing. In the dreary light of the cloudy day, the solid wood of the porch and the frame of most windows where dotted in twists of holly and mistletoe, the berries shining warmly. The decorations stretched further inside, through the hall and the living room. The Barns were evidently ready for Christmas.

For yet another time since his arrival a couple of days prior, Adam contemplated the sight, while retreating back into the warmth of the house. There was something indiscernible about the festive display, a delicate feeling that kept nagging at the back of his mind and pushing a part of Adam’s brain — the one desensitised from and genuinely uncaring towards all the common holidays made of family and money to spend — slightly out of balance. 

He could feel Ronan’s eyes on him, though, so Adam stopped watching the tree and pushed his efforts into hanging the coat back on the rack. 

“You really went all in with the decoration.” 

“It’s Christmas,” Ronan replied, matter-of-factly, moving towards the fireplace to light it up and warm his feet there. “Matthew will like this.”

Matthew surely would. At the same time, Adam wasn’t sure if and how he liked it himself, and settling for a diplomatically aseptic _I don’t care either way_ left a bad aftertaste in his mouth. 

The feeling was slippery. 

It would have been reasonable for Ronan to be pissed at Adam’s lack of participation to this specific brand of _Lynchness_ , but he wasn’t. Incongruently, it was another reason for Adam to feel like he was missing something essential for this whole winter break at the Barns.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Following a series of contingencies, 300 Fox Way became the logical destination for Christmas Eve. 

Opal cannon-balled herself out of the BMW back door as soon as Ronan parked in a free spot by the sidewalk. In her rush towards the house, completely lit up and lively even from the distance, she didn’t even bother with the garden gate and just jumped over the fence to cross the perpetually overgrown grass. 

Adam laughed his way out of the passenger's seat. Chainsaw had stayed at home, nested close to the fireplace, so there was no fighting to maneuver a very opinionated bird out. “Maybe they shouldn’t have promised her that she could touch the oven.”

Ronan locked the car with the flashing click on his copy of the key and walked around to join him on the sidewalk. “What a terrible mistake. Also not my problem.”

The grin he flashed Adam — all plush lips and pointy canines — was a mesmerizing when matched with his sleek charcoal grey suit and the almost shocking splash of colour of his bordeaux tie. It would have been an impeccable Sunday best performance, appropriate even for Declan himself, if it weren’t for the loose hanging of the tie and the first two buttons of the shirt undone. Still, when they entered in the house — closing the door that Opal had left wide open behind them — Maura rushed by the two of them, brushing Adam’s arm with one hand and giving Ronan a pointed once-over.

“Looking sleek, Ronan,” she mused, in her very everyday clothing and surrounded by an house that was evidently not in full Christmas celebration attire.

Ronan wrinkled his nose, but managed to contain the contrariness after a year and a half of exposure to the 300 Fox Way's women. “I’m going to Church right after, as soon as Declan and Matthew get here.”

“Of course you are.” Maura’s smile was gentle, but got morphed as soon as she started moving again towards the living room by her calling at full voice. “Blue! The rest of your boys are here!”

“They are not my boys!” Blue called back, but still tumbled out of one of the ground floor rooms and tackled Adam’s side in her best impression of a five-foot tall rugby player. Her skin was dark and still glowing from the wind and the sun from the recent road trip in Arizona and California, and she somehow knitted together three different pieces of woolen sweaters into an oversized dress.

Adam sunk into the embrace, “Hey, Blue.”

“Hey, Adam. Looking good, with your smart boy vibes.”

“There is indeed a clear sense of Ivy League in this hallway,” Gansey — impeccably dressed in cashmere and needlecord trousers, a failed attempt on casual ruined by the inherent poshness of his being — stepped away from a door frame and got closer to them. 

There was a very civilized show of hand shaking between him and Ronan — weirdly firm and intense, thumbs slotting together, tendons lifting like wires underneath the skin — before Blue snorted in a very undignified manner. Gansey smiled sheepishly and caved, dragging Ronan close into a hug. 

Ronan’s shoulders sunk down, a subtle yield of his imposing figure, one arm circling Gansey’s wide back. “Welcome home, shithead.”

Gansey smiled with the same unabashed delight he would usually reserve to dusty manuscript munched through by time. He reached with one hand and dragged Blue and Adam close. “It’s good to see you, before we go and face the snow up in Montana.”

“We first have to face your parents and the Gansey Christmas dinner tomorrow.” Blue reminded him, but leaned his face against Ronan’s arm and Ronan didn’t bark her off, weirdly subdued by the whole situation.

“Yeah, that’s a controversial truth.” Gansey admitted, but didn’t stop smiling.

Adam stayed silent through the whole exchange, Blue’s small hands clasped on the fabric of his shirt and Gansey’s grip against his arm, while Ronan towered subtly over the three of them. 

It was inexplicable and way too convoluted, the way he had missed them. He had not intended to miss anyone in Henrietta, and yet here he was. Here he had been eager to be, since they told him they were going to come back for Christmas as well. 

“Hey, human pile!” Henry made his way from the kitchen through the hallway, carrying an amount of plates that shouldn’t have been physically feasible for a human to balance. “Are you going to help me with this? So I can join the group hug. And just so you know, I won’t greet anyone until I can do it properly, because I’m rude like that.”

Blue laughed, Gansey started to apologise, and they all extricated from the twist of limbs without making the process awkward after too much of a wait.

Reflexively, Adam took a deep breath as well, and went to do his part on the setting of the table.

  
  


* * *

  
  


As it turned out, getting to sit down and eat dinner in a very commonplace manner was asking for too much.

The table cloth was spread over a collection of four different tables — mismatched in height and width but at least stable on their legs — and surrounded by a random amount of chairs. There was enough space at least for Opal and Gwenllian, for sure, but the latter had disappeared regally into her attic and Opal had followed suit — probably more interested in what she had in her hair today over anything on the table now that the oven was off.

Calla — very pointedly stressing that _no, kids, you just need to sit the hell down and drink your mulled wine, do you think I want you messing around?_ — had barely put down the fifth pie, while Jimi rearranged Maura’s valiant attempt at vegetable bowls around to make space, when a very marked bang echoed from the door.

Silence fell through the living room.

They were all still turned around when the second ramming on the entrance door came. Nervousness prickled at Adam’s throat, but when he turned around to Jimi, Maura and Calla he caught them simply putting the utensil down.

“How many times did you draw The Fool today, Maura?” Jimi asked, neatly folding the pot holder over.

“Five times.” Maura’s reply was accompanied by the third loud bang.

“Is one of you gonna get that door, or are we waiting for it to get battered down?” Calla looked at all of them, a very unimpressed frown on her forehead.

Gansey and Ronan jumped on their feet in a marked, well-practice unison oiled by years of recklessness and an aptitude to crazy plans that probably beat everyone else’s in the room. While Gansey strolled, valiant as a king, towards the entrance, Adam could not help but notice that Ronan was weirdly tense. 

“Do we have any guesses on what is on the other side of the door?” Henry asked, without losing the usual chirpiness, even while he snatched Blue’s pink switchblade from one of the six pockets of her dress. 

“Oh, no idea, and I don’t think the Arizona guy with the rifle would follow us here.” Blue replied, trying to sound very sensible while she was actually cautious. She picked up a bat from the umbrella stand and put it on Henry’s hand in exchange of her switchblade.

“The what, now?” Adam looked at the both of them, with the clear underlying of _and you haven’t told me about it why?_. Still, as the only actually practical person in the room, he recovered Ronan’s mobile from where he abandoned it on the table, because _someone_ must be able to call for help if needs must. 

“I would say that’s a story for another moment.” Gansey eyed them when they lined up at his back, close to the door. Another ramming made them all wince, the door evidently shaking under the impact. “Okay, since we’re all here, I’ll open up.”

They carefully lined up on the side opposite to the hinges and Gansey borrowed Henry’s bat to push down the door handle without having to stand too close to it. 

Adam didn’t know what he was expecting — and certainly could not imagine what Ronan was thinking to match the sour expression in his face — but he had somehow assumed that whatever was banging would come barging in into the entrance, escalating the action.

Instead, everything was perfectly still and they were left to stare over the threshold, the light on the inside pouring out to light up the doorsteps.

On the other side, a reindeer taller than Blue and with antlers that could easily reach the top of Ronan’s head stood innocently, already detached from all the raucous it had caused. It shook its head as in greeting, and a tinkling followed, not only from the big bell hanging from its neck but also from the jingle bells on the garlands twirled around the antlers.

The reindeer had a very bright, almost shining, red nose.

Henry burst out in a laugh, “Is that _Rudolph the reindeer_?”

“It would...appear so?” Gansey was remarkably skeptical for someone who spent years of his life chasing a sleeping Welsh king.

“No, okay, I draw a line at Santa Claus,” Blue lifted her hands up, as if she could bully the reindeer out of existence. The reindeer, on its part, just shook the jingling antlers again and dragged its hooves on the worn-out concrete outside of the door. 

“Fuck Santa Claus, get this thing away from here,” Ronan snarled, overcoming the weird silent stillness that apparently possessed him and making to surpass Gansey and get to the door.

Adam could feel the reality shifting around them, in that subtle way that clicked events together in his mind. The Christmas decoration, Ronan gingerly readying the house for Matthew and for the holidays, the jumping mattress, the hooves print on the icy ground.

“Shit,” he gritted out, dragging the palm of the right hand over his face. He could feel Blue, Gansey and Henry’s eyes on him like a physical presence. “That’s not Santa Claus. Ronan dreamt it.”

The howling laughter that followed from Blue and Henry echoed through the hallway. Gansey had that very peculiar expression that he wore when he was trying to maintain a subdue composure but was instead bemused. 

“Fucking drop it and help me!” Ronan bit out, reaching for the reindeer.

The reindeer scurried out of his reach, the red nose shining slightly.

“Are you kidding me, Lynch, this is _amazing_!” Henry’s camera kept flashing, Adam couldn’t even pinpoint the moment he took his phone out to document the whole business. 

Ronan and the reindeer were circling each other, in a weird mess rhythmed by the bells chiming around the animal. “Cut the crap before someone see this in the damn garden and _help me_ , for Christ’s sake!”

“Oh.” Blue said, suddenly looking over the reindeer and into her own neighbourhood. 

“Uh.” Gansey echoed, clearly conceding the point.

Even though Henrietta had admittedly seen weirder and more concerning stuff than a perfect dreamt version of Rudolph, Adam had no doubt this could be the turning point for finally getting _everyone’s_ attention on the little town and its shady supernatural businesses. 

They did get onto it promptly, then, even though Henry was most likely taking a video — “We seriously need a record of this thing, come on!” — rather than helping out.

Surprising no one, dream-Rudolph was just as ill-tempered and shenanigan-prone as anything Ronan has ever dreamt, though luckily less deadly than some of his other creations. Huge and surprisingly agile, even with four of them trying to actively coordinate, the reindeer constantly escaped and refused to be cornered. The net result was a merry chase around the garden of 300 Fox Way, vaguely lit just by the light filtering from the windows of house — from which Maura, Calla and Jimi watched while sipping wine cheerfully — and from some streetlights. 

“This is seriously not working!” Adam pointed out to the others, after the fourth stumble around the unkempt grass, and the reindeer ran away happily towards the other corner of the house once again.

“I’m afraid that’s true.” Gansey heaved out, resting an elbow against the bark of Blue’s favourite tree to catch his breath. “Jane…” he piped up suddenly “...is the hammock still in the Dream Pig?”

“What fucking hammock?” Ronan turned around, the reindeer having escaped him once more. He was frustrated by more than the exercise, guilt creeping out from the shades of his aggressiveness. 

“You mean the net one? I think it’s under the passenger's seat...or I don’t know, maybe in the boot,” Henry stopped filming for a second to reply. How he could manage not to get levelled to the ground by Ronan’s murderous gaze was a mystery. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, four people chasing your Rudolph is already too much.”

“You know what, maybe Henry is right, maybe we’re just scaring it! And we’re _not_ gonna catch it with a _net_!” Blue protested. “If we could just convince it to get closer…”

“Jesus, maggot, it’s a damn reindeer, it’s bigger than you. Not that it’s fucking difficult, but…”

Adam got moving again, and went to grab Ronan by the scruff. He was tense as a wire and ready to fight, but he did not fight Adam off. “Okay, let’s not start this. You three can try and catch it gently, Ronan and I will recover the hammock...just in case. Deal?”

“Deal.” Gansey confirmed, tossing him the keys of the Pig for him to catch.

They left Henry to put away his phone and the three of them to start a conversation on the theoretically prime method of gentle approach to wildlife. Adam tuned out comments on _that time in the valley though_ with a weird sense of detached melancholy about adventures that did not involve him — even though he had his own share and a life that he chose for himself — and concentrate on Ronan.

“You could have just told me what we were chasing off this morning,” Adam said, matter-of-factly regardless of the risk of escalation with Ronan. 

“What about the damn _your creations don’t leave the Barns_?” Ronan countered, dark in the face with trouble. 

Adam opened the car, somehow bright in its orange paint even in the dimly lit driveaway of 300 Fox way. By unspoken agreement, he opened the boot, while Ronan slid himself in the passenger seat after a frustrating challenge with the door — which had behaved perfectly before the first leg of the road trip, so maybe Adam should really give the Camaro a look before the others disappeared North.

“That’s usually true, though. And it’s a _reindeer_ , Ronan, not a H-bomb, you could have just told me about it.”

Ronan made a noncommittal half-grunt and rummaged around in the front, “Jesus fuck this place is a mess.”

While Adam did know a deflection when he heard one he could hardly disagree with the concept, especially while facing a boot that seemed mostly full of hiking supplies, tents, lamps and backup pairs of shoes. “Tell me about it, any luck with the hammock?”

“Fuck no. But there is even more stuff in the backseat.”

Adam sighed deeply. “I’ll come and have a look. If we don’t find it at least Blue won’t freak out about animal mistreatment and whatnot.”

Ronan snorted. “That red-nosed fucker is quick as shit. A net won’t kill it — or hurt it, Jesus — it’s just so we don’t end up on every Goddamn blog in the country.”

Adam moved around a book of maps and lifted what he hoped would be the hammock only to figure that was one of Blue’s crazy net dresses. He was just about to say something — about the blogs, the clothes, Ronan’s nervousness — when he heard the clattering noise and the clamor of voices approaching.

“Adam, watch out!” 

He did, prompted by Ronan’s alert, but it did not save him from getting pushed bodily inside the car, the backseat door slamming under the impact of jingling antlers. Ronan turned around on the passenger's seat, reaching for him with clear concern while looking around suspiciously and swearing under his breath.

“I’m okay, I’m all right, it was just a shove.”

“What the fuck is that thing doing?” Ronan gritted out. His eyes followed the Dream Rudolph, currently rushing in circles around the car in a flurry of antlers, garlands and bells. A bit more in the distance, Henry, Blue, and Gansey watched helplessly, cautiously keeping out of the way of this big of an animal in a rush. 

At some point around the fifth turn, the Camaro started to vibrate, shaking as if they were back at driving it in off roads paths. The reindeer stopped running around, nudging the sleek metal of the hood with his nose for a second, before turning around and getting off in a rush once again.

Impossibly, the Dream Pig followed.

Like a sleigh on a snow path, Adam and Ronan found themselves dragged along Fox way.

“Fuck, Christ,” Ronan tried to turn on the engine, reflexively, but the Camaro was as unresponsive as it had been in crazy hot days in the Virginia countryside. “Parrish, can you do something about it?”

Adam clasped his hands on the two front seats, trying to soften the increasing shaking of the car while the reindeer brought them off road, towards a dried football field immersed in the dark. “I can work engines, Lynch, not empty hoods full of flowers.”

“Fuck, you’re right. Why the hell is it doing it? _How_ the hell is it doing it?”

They were good questions, but there was no ready answer to them. “Maybe we can try and jump off now that we’re out in a field.” Adam contemplated, trying to problem solve the situation even if it meant leaving the Camaro on its on devices with a Dream Rudolph.

Just as he was saying it, the car stopped shaking and tilted weirdly — first all the way to the left and then all the way to the right, softly and effortlessly. Ronan and Adam exchanged a very alarmed look, and then rushed to look out.

The reindeer was still running, but not on the ground. Slowly but steadily, they all lifted up, and up, and the Pig flew off in the cloudy winter sky. The Dream Rudolph’s nose was shining brighter than a beacon. 

On the other side of the windows, thankfully closed, Henrietta grew smaller and smaller underneath them. They began circling the town, and it would have resembled Gansey’s faithful cardboard reconstruction of it if it weren’t for the dark. Streetlight and lit-up windows traced the town in negative, as a photograph waiting to be developed, and dimmed out in the distance towards the wild darkness of the mountain and the countryside. The quiet lulling of the Camaro was nothing like the thunderous engine of the helicopter Helen flew them in, and the whistling of the wind outside the vehicle was spaced out by the jingle of bells and Ronan string of increasingly inventive swearing. 

Adam pressed his forehead against the corner of the driver’s seat, and began to laugh.

Ronan stopped swearing and eyed him carefully. “Parrish?”

“Ronan…” Adam was having a hard time catching his breath. “...your _reindeer_ is making us _fly_!”

Ronan was eying him suspiciously, and the worry that Adam self-control finally snapped to leave him in hysterics several dozen of feet off the ground was not completely unfounded on his part. Still, it was fucking, recklessly, hilarious.

“This is amazing,” Adam reiterated, liftings his head and looking at Ronan and Henrietta gleaming on the other side of the windows. The laughing fit was only slowly subsiding. “I don’t know how you do it, and you always do it, but come on.”

Ronan back around on the passenger's seat, looking towards the windshield and over it, where Dream Rudolph was still effortlessly trotting around — the red light of its nose reflecting from the bells on its antlers in weird dots around the light brown fur.

“I was kind of hoping you could have fun,” he murmured, at the end, reluctant as ever to express any concept of emotional value.

“What, with Rudolph?”

“I don’t know. Fuck.” One hand snatched up to slide on the buzzed cut hair. “With Christmas, even? I know you don’t like it, not really. But you came back, so I wanted you to have fun. And all these silly stories were fucking fun, when we were little.”

Another laugh started pulling at the corners of Adam’s mouth. “So that’s why you dreamt me a Rudolph? To steal the Camaro from Gansey and drench me in Christmas spirit?”

“You’re an asshole, I didn’t know it could fucking _fly_ a car!”

“Maybe it can fly only this Pig because you dreamt it as well. Why don’t you dream all the other reindeers, maybe we can fly anything with the whole pack...flock…”

“It’s a _herd_ , you fucker,” Ronan’s tension broke into a barked laugh, finally turning back to look at Adam. Their eyes met for a second, before Ronan’s dropped on Adam’s smiling lips, as if to follow their profile and convince himself that he was actually happy.

Still perched with one elbow on the back of the driver’s seat, Adam reached to grab Ronan’s nape. There was no resistance when he dragged him close and kissed him.

That high in the sky in the middle of winter, the inside of the car was cold and so were Ronan’s lips. When he tilted his head and pressed their lips together better, though, the impression of humid warmth from the soft inside of the bottom lip was starking against Adam’s. Adam hummed and caved first, not even trying to play a game of softness and teasing, and pushed forward. He liked the feeling of Ronan’s mouth dropping open between them, he liked even more to slide his tongue inside and feel the kiss tingle all the way down his spine.

Ronan’s mouth felt impossibly hot and familiar, spiced up with the crazy amount of cinnamon Calla had manage to drop in the mulled wine. Adam felt very hungry and very fulfilled at the same time — at every twist of their tongue, at the small itching in breath against his skin while Ronan tried to inhale and drag the kiss deeper, further.

When the need for air broke them up eventually, Adam brushed their nose together, lips still lingering against each other’s, and opened his eyes. In the almost darkness, Ronan still had his eyes closed, intent in their proximity. Everything was surging weirdly against Adam’s chest, so he just tilted his head to the side and kissed along Ronan’s handsome face — the solid cut of his cheekbones against the skin, down the smoothness of his shaved-clean jaw — all the way down his neck. 

With a faint sigh at the side of Adam’s ear, Ronan craned his neck in a clear path for Adam’s lips. Adam kissed it, again and again, hyper-aware of the skin warming up at every slide of tongue. A slight shiver followed when Adam made his way even further down, hooking a finger on the perfectly pressed collar of Ronan’s white shirt to close his mouth at the bottom of his neck and suck. 

“Shit…” Ronan whistled out between gritted teeth, grabbing at the back of Adam’s elbow, as if to stop him from withdrawing. 

Not that it mattered or it was needed. Adam kept at it long enough to leave a mark, and then move slightly down, toeing the line of the two open buttons with two more hickeys all the way down to Ronan’s clavicle. Ronan burrowed a hand in Adam’s hair, when he stopped sucking. His chest was heaving under the open dampness of Adam’s lips, but Adam’s own breath bumped back from Ronan’s skin to his face.

“Should I come to the backseat?”

“I’m not gonna fuck you in a flying car.”

“You need to choose a good way to go, at some point, Parrish.”

They both burst out laughing, again, and by silent agreement they stopped escalating the contact.

“Hey, Ronan,” Adam whispered, lifting back up without sneaking out of the grip on his hair.

“Mhn?” 

The hand combed through his hair and Adam felt like dropping his head against the side of Ronan’s. “It’s a very fun Christmas.”

The smile on Ronan’s lips was a clear stretch on Adam’s temple, when Ronan turned around to kiss it, intensely delicate. “Good to know. But we’re gonna freeze our asses off and fucking starve if we don’t get the fuck down soon,” he gave a very pointed look at the Dream Rudolph, rising his voice from the car. “What do you think, shithead full of bells?”

The reindeer seemed to hear him just fine, shaking his antlers just for the sake of more jingling and bellowing softly. After all the chasing around, it was almost amicable now, leading them in circles that went lower and lower, back towards the field they took off from. 

Trust any animal of Ronan’s to be as temperamental as him.

By the time they settled back on the ground, Adam felt much more mentally ready for the Eve and the Christmas festivities to follow. He hadn’t realized he was nervous about them — about having someone worth spending them with for the first time ever, about not matching the mood and the expectation for lack of any practice — until now, with the weight lifted off his shoulders. 

Of course, all the occupants of 300 Fox Way and then some, if the rest of the Lynch brothers had arrived in the meantime, would be freaking out. But that was another story, and maybe Dream Rudolph could fly for them as well.

  
  


* * *

  
  


On the morning of Boxing Day, Adam woke up alone in the bed but not alone in the bedroom, Opal cheerfully dangling her furry legs off one the chairs and watching him.

“Will you come, if you’re up? Kerah is out already!”

He had to snatch every second it took him to put some clothes appropriate for the type of chill he would experience outside, but at the end Opal got a grip of his hand and dragged him out. 

“It’s not that cold!”

“You’re never cold, you don’t count.”

“Kerah says you’re never cold, but Kerah gets cold easily. So doesn’t he count as well?”

Adam laughed, “No, maybe he doesn’t either.”

Apparently, for once in his life, Adam had been the last one to wake up. The frosty path Opal led him through was already marked by more than one pair of footprints; when they got to a shady corner close to the bent of creek that crossed the Barns, Declan and Matthew’s backs were as unmistakable as Ronan’s. 

“I can’t believe you actually dreamt a _Rudolph_ , Ronan,” Declan was saying.

“Yeah, you fucking said that already. Four times. What’s your point? Is there a time limit on reindeers?” Ronan turned around with one eyebrow up.

“Well, we all know what Declan’s favourite reindeer was, don’t we?” Matthew singsonged, circling his first brother.

“It’s not like I _wanted_ one!” Declan snapped, all too promptly and with an uncharacteristic tinge of fluster in his tone.

“Suuuure you didn’t,” Ronan dragged, a shit-eating grin spreading. "What do you know, maybe I'll give you a lift back to D.C. in a couple of days."

Adam had to stop eavesdropping silently because Opal started losing it, her cawing laugh spreading and prompting Chainsaw to follow suite from where she was stomping around on the ground. 

“Well, now we get to keep it, so it’s fair, isn’t it?” Matthew said, as Ronan gestured Adam closer.

A handful of meters head, the secluded corner of the Barns they were at was covered in bright white snow and glistening with artificial cold, just like Cabeswater used to do when it changed season for good. In a cheerful jingle of bells, Dream Rudolph trotted around its new home, the red nose happily shining. 

It was a good fix.

It had been a good Christmas.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading!
> 
> This is the first "creative" stuff that I manage to write, away from the terrible, terrible grip of academic obligations. It has been amazing to come back to fandom my heart out, I hope it's not in a weird style because of "residual technical writing"-mode!  
> Everything it's sadly unbetaed at the moment, so forgive and forget the typos, I swear I'll update a corrected version if I can! (EDIT: Now with way less typo after the lovely interropunct gave it a read for me, and I love them for this! <3)
> 
> All my thanks go to Sabeth (a.k.a. Picapicae/Sae), that helped me come up with this crazy plot you just read and the Pynch SecretSanta '17 team that organized this amazing gig!
> 
> Happy holidays to everyone, mid-lunacy in particular of course ;) I hope this is a worthy present :**
> 
> Kudos, comments and crazy asks on my [Tumblr](http://seekthemist.tumblr.com) are the most appreciated thing ever, to keep the morale of the troops up!


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